For this woman born in Lebanon, the record is not a mere tribute. French culture and the French language have always been a life ideal, while others imagined an American destiny.
Hiba Tawaji, an artist first known in the Middle East, is releasing À la française!, an album on which she sings in duet with her husband, Ibrahim Maalouf, hits by Serge Gainsbourg, Charles Aznavour and Julien Clerc.
Her studies at school, then at university, were conducted in French. In Lebanon, she says, French is like a second language.
The album thus brings together two voices familiar to the public: hers and that of Ibrahim Maalouf. Together, they cover songs associated with Gainsbourg, Aznavour and Clerc, three figures of the French repertoire.
At a time when demonstrations are multiplying in the country and when high-school students, university students and employees sometimes march in the same processions, she acknowledges the legitimacy of the demands.
There are dreams that are hummed to the tunes of songs. With À la française!, Hiba Tawaji gives this dream the form of a duet, and that of a repertoire she says she has long wanted to sing.